GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD
Reason to vote against Initiative 522 - common sense
The hot topic coming up on election day is genetically modified organisms (foods).
Before you vote, you need to ask yourself if Initiative 522 really is about food safety or about creating another massive, non-taxpaying, regulating, government agency which will be used to needlessly increase your taxes.
How many non-taxpaying government employees will it take to police the tens of thousands of stores and billions of products?
Regulation of GMO, if ever necessary, must happen at the source, not at the grocery store. If for no other reason, consider the sheer magnitude.
One person could regulate the source creating the GMO versus hundreds, perhaps thousands, to regulate tens of thousands of stores with billions of products.
While it may be possible to genetically modify a plant or animal in a negative way, one must understand that there are very few, if any, organisms on earth that are not already GMO, including mankind.
The primary difference is the time it takes to get the same results. There is selective and cross breeding versus direct gene splicing, all of which are theoretically possible to abuse.
Mules are sterile, but are they a bad thing?
Every human is the genetically modified result of both his or her parents. Even clones are an exact copy of an already modified organism.
For as long as the earth has existed, man and nature have delved into the art of selection and cross breeding. The result is genetic modification - a GMO.
Weak plants die, and those that survive have been genetically modified, be it by man or nature. Like it or not, without selective breeding, the world would not be producing the abundance and variety of crops we have today.
Besides, if the countless centuries of cross breeding are so bad, why are people living longer and healthier lives than ever in the entire history of mankind? It is often said that we are what we eat, right? Initiative 522 will not prevent potential GMO abuse and, if properly administered, would pretty much label every item in the store as a GMO.
They are all already genetically modified by one means or another.
Dale Hellewell
Royal City